Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

Second, there is the tactical error of assuming that a source’s level of resistance
is directly correlated with his level of knowledgeability. While common sense
might suggest a logic inherent in this assumption, reality will quickly correct it.
Resistance is the direct product of several key factors: training, life experience,
personality, commitment to a cause, deep-seated feelings about the interrogator
and/or his country of origin, and even anger at the manner in which the source has
been treated since capture. Any one of these can lead the truck driver to protect the
already compromised route he was to drive during an operation more fiercely than
a less-motivated nuclear engineer will protect the key to disabling a radioactive
dispersal device. 79
Nobody Loves You
An interrogatee who is withholding items of no grave
consequence to himself may sometimes be persuaded to talk by
the simple tactic of pointing out that to date all of the information
about his case has come from persons other than himself. The
interrogator wants to be fair. He recognizes that some of the
denouncers may have been biased or malicious…the source
owes it to himself to be sure that the interrogator hears both
sides of the story. 80
(See observations under next heading.)
Joint Suspects
If two or more interrogation sources are suspected of joint
complicity in acts directed against U.S. security, they should
be separated immediately. If time permits, it may be a good
idea (depending upon the psychological assessment of both) to
postpone interrogation for about a week. Any anxious inquiries
from either can be met with a knowing grin and some such reply
as, “We’ll get to you in due time. There’s no hurry now.” 81
The primary difference between these two approaches is that in the first the
source is presented with evidence — largely implicit — that other, unnamed,
unknown (to the source), and as yet unseen detainees have provided information
that reflects negatively upon him, while in the second scenario the interrogator
refers directly to damaging information gathered from other detainees known to
the source.
Leveraging one source against another is a common police tactic (the central
idea of the classic “prisoner’s dilemma”) and is especially useful when dealing
79
A radioactive dispersal device is often referred to in the media and in popular literature as a
“dirty bomb.”
80
KUBARK, 67.
81
KUBARK, 70.
125